I need some feedback about some pitfalls (mainly conceptually) about
a project I am considering.
For a clonal and selfing plant in small isolated populations, I want to use
essentially random oligo probes (GATA, CAC, GACA ...) to probe genomic
DNA (5--10 ramets per population). I suspect there are few different clones
per population. Specifically
1. Will these probes, which show minisatellite variation among individuals
in other organisms (e.g. vertabrates), necessarily distinguish between
genets in plants, or are these hypervariable regions considered to be
ubiquitous?
2. Could I use presence or absence of bands in a cluster analysis to
look at genetic variation among populations, or is there a problem with
this approach?
I appreciate any helpful (critical) comments. Thanks.
Neal Stewart